This is the first of what I hope will be a weekly Sunday post. I’ll be searching the net for whatever has been posted during the previous week – posts related to meter and rhyme in poetry. Hopefully the post will expand as I get better at it. If any readers would like to recommend sites please do so in the comment field. Feel free to recommend your own blog or poem if you like but please don’t post your poem in the comment field (provide a link and the first lines).

Voices is a CD with original recordings of Icelandic folk music. The recordings were collected around Iceland in the homes of farmers, grandmothers and fishermen that still lived in the old tradition or could remember some of the old songs that had been sung in Iceland for generations. The CD contains chanting of rimur, hymns, ballads and nursery rhymes.

The latest offering in the Poets on Poetry series from acclaimed poet, critic, and National Endowment for the Arts’ chairman Dana Gioia, Barrier of a Common Language collects essays on British poets and poetry spanning the past two decades.

Gioia ignited a national debate on the relevance of poetry in 1991 when he published an essay in the Atlantic titled “Can Poetry Matter?” The essay was expanded into a book of the same name and went on to become one of the best-selling books of contemporary poetry criticism in the 1990s…

One of the loveliest poems in the English language is Frost’s The Road Not Taken. Part of the magic is in how Frost loosens meter to obtain a more colloquial tone. In one of the most enjoyable books I own (among books on Frost) Lea Newman relates that according to a survey of 18,000 written, recorded and videotaped responses, this poem (along with Robert Frost) is America’s most popular poem…

Able Muse exclusively publishes formal poetry complemented by art and photography, fiction and non-fiction including essays, book reviews and interviews with a focus on metrical poetry. We are looking for well-crafted poems of any length or subject that employ skillful and imaginative use of meter and rhyme, executed in a contemporary idiom, that reads as naturally as your free verse poems. All forms of formal poetry are welcome. For an example of what we’re interested in, check the poetry of Philip Larkin, James Merrill, Elizabeth Bishop, Derek Walcott, Marilyn Hacker, Richard Wilbur, Anthony Hecht….

Able Muse seeks to publish established as well as new voices. We read everything and publish only the best. Send your best!

Send only previously unpublished poems. No simultaneous submissions, please. Contributions that have already been published or are being considered for publication elsewhere are not eligible to be considered for publication in Able Muse, unless a cross-publishing arrangement has previously been negotiated.

Dr. Bridgford explained that a criticism of contemporary poetry is that it is too much like prose, hence the increasing appeal of the traditional form that employs rhyme and meter. Her favorite traditional form is the sonnet, a 14-line poem. “It sounds different with every little change. It appeals to my sense of detail,” she said.

Dr. Bridgford said she likes poems that are conversational, and wants readers to notice the form and rhythms. “I like to break the form and experiment with various parts of form,” she said….

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We in the United States, as in any other country, aren't always represented by who governs us. So long as you afford to others the dignity and respect for life and liberty you would afford yourself, it doesn't matter to me where you're from, what language you speak or what truth you believe in. You're welcome here.

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Patrick Gillespie has self-published one book of Poetry and edited nothing besides. His poetry and criticism has been firmly ignored and hasn't been translated into a single language. Gillespie has never been a Poet Laureate (let alone a Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere), a Literary Fellow of the National Endowment of the Arts, or a Fellow of the Vermont Arts Council. He has received no prizes from the Poetry Foundation (or any other poetry related organizations) and the devil reportedly worries that Hell will freeze over if he ever receives anything like a Genius Grant from the MacArthur Fellows Program. He has been firmly rejected by any and all publishers. No plaques have been or will be dedicated to him or his poetry. Gillespie has received no recognition or prizes of any kind. He holds zero academic credentials or titles. In short, Gillespie is just like you -- of little to no importance to all but a few. You have no reason whatsoever to read him. He wears bottle-cap glasses, works as a Carpenter, has three daughters and a good sense of humor. He is currently replacing all the bad windows in his Vermont home.